Saturday, March 31, 2012

There are many disturbing questions surrounding the shooting of Trayvon Martin, many of them outlined here. A rigorous independent investigation geared towards answering these questions and determining the extent to which George Zimmerman committed criminal acts is essential. But as rallies today by civil rights groups and others "demand justice" and call for Zimmerman's "immediate arrest," I want to urge caution.

The disparity in treatment between young African Americans suspected of criminal conduct and George Zimmerman, who we know shot and killed Trayvon Martin, is stark and I share the frustration and the outrage of the protesters. But, I remain very uncomfortable with the demands and petition drives calling for Zimmerman's arrest and prosecution (not to mention the vigilante response) based only on the selected facts to which we, the public, have become privy.

There are very good reasons to doubt the good faith of local law enforcement and the prosecuting agencies in this case, and we should certainly be demanding justice. But we can't know yet what a just response is. We should await the findings of the special prosecutor -- which may very well spur more legitimate questions and demands -- rather than rush to judgment now based on the limited information filtered down to us from the media.

Far more often than not, in the wake of a tragic death it is the suspicious-looking African American in the hoodie for whom there is this kind of clamor for "swift justice."

Friday, March 30, 2012

Amar, a Yale law professor, goes on to say: "The most important limit, the one we fought the Revolutionary War for,
is that the people doing this to you are the people you elect. That’s
the main check. The broccoli argument is like something they said when
we were debating the income tax: If they can tax me, they can tax me at
100 percent! And yes, they can. But they won’t. Because you could vote
them out of office. They have the power to do all sorts of ridiculous
things that they won’t do because you’d vote them out of office."

There has always appeared to be a consensus in mainstream circles, if not necessarily in the legal community, that whether you agreed with him or not, Justice Antonin Scalia possesses a great legal mind. His performance during the arguments this week on the Affordable Care Act case was therefore striking for the way he often parroted Tea Party talking points.

Talking Points Memo provides the top five GOP Buzzwords echoed by the Supreme Court Justice:

‘Broccoli’

One of the GOP’s favorite talking points about the individual
mandate, which a conservative lower court judge also invoked, is that it
could open the door to Congress mandating that people eat broccoli.
“Could you define the market — everybody has to buy food sooner or
later, so you define the market as food,” Scalia said, discussing a
hypothetical. “Therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can
make people buy broccoli.” He added, “Does that expand your ability to, to issue mandates to the people?”

‘Exercise’

On a similar note, Republicans have warned
that letting Congress require an affirmative act could lead to forced
exercise in order to keep people healthy. Scalia made that point, too.
“Everybody has to exercise, because there’s no doubt that lack of
exercise causes illness, and that causes health care costs to go up,” he
said. “So the Federal government says everybody has to join an exercise
club.”

‘Cornhusker Kickback’

During Wednesday’s arguments about how closely linked all the
provisions of the law are, Scalia twice echoed a catchphrase devised by
Republicans to mock a special Medicaid deal Senate leaders offered Ben
Nelson (D-NE) to win his vote.
“If we struck down nothing in this legislation but the — what’s it
called, the Cornhusker kickback, okay, we find that to violate the
constitutional proscription of venality, okay?” the justice said. “When
we strike that down, it’s clear that Congress would not have passed it
without that. It was the means of getting the last necessary vote in the
Senate. And you are telling us that the whole statute would fall
because the Cornhusker kickback is bad. That can’t be right.”
Obscured in Scalia’s remark is that the deal was stripped out of the statute around the time of enactment — a fact that hasn’t stopped Republicans from railing against it over the last two years.

‘2,700 Pages’

Discussing what parts of the bill could be “severed” from the
mandate, Scalia said: “Mr. Kneedler, what happened to the 8th Amendment?
You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?” There were laughs
in the chamber. “Is this not totally unrealistic? That we are going to
go through this enormous bill item by item and decide each one?”
The 8th Amendment is the part of the Constitution that prohibits
“cruel and unusual punishment” — the length of the bill is a running
joke among Republicans, who often invoke the 2,700 figure, to argue that nobody could reasonably be expected to read it.

‘10th Amendment’

“I mean, the 10th Amendment says the powers not given to the Federal
Government are reserved, not just to the States, but to the States and
the people,” Scalia said Tuesday, arguing that the court has held
certain laws “reasonably adapted” but not “proper” because they
“violated the sovereignty of the States, which was implicit in the
constitutional structure.”
The 10th Amendment argument is a common line of attack by Republicans, including Mitt Romney,
invoked to argue that ‘Obamacare’ tramples states rights. And though
the states challenging the law claim the Medicaid expansion violates the
10th Amendment, Scalia cited it in reference to the individual mandate.
Scalia’s argument is particularly noteworthy because the justice greatly disappointed 10th Amendment advocates in his 2005 Gonzalez v. Raich decision,
concurring with the court’s liberals to say Congress may override a
state law permitting licensed medical marijuana patients to grow
cannabis for personal, non-commercial use.

Joan McCarter at Daily Kos wrote two pieces yesterday, one on the actions of the Republicans in the House and one on what they did in the Senate, that come pretty close to telling us all we need to know about what the GOP stands for.

First, the House Republicans passed Paul Ryan's budget resolution, the so-called "Path to Prosperity," which as McCarter explains, would among other things end Medicare as we know it:

The House Republicans made their ultimate dystopian statement today, in
passing Rep. Paul Ryan's budget in a 228-191 vote. Ten Republicans voted
against it, no Democrats voted for it and 13 members did not vote.

House Speaker John Boehner called this plan "a real vision of what we were to do if we get more control here in this town. It's still a Democrat-run town."

Just a few reminders about the Ryan budget, and what the House
Republicans put down as their political marker for 2012, their vision
for a Republican-ruled America: It would give the wealthy a humongous
tax break, the lowest tax rate since the Hoover administration; it would gut nutritional assistance, cutting it by 17 percent over the next decade; it would cut Medicare benefits and begin the process of killing the program; it would kill millions of jobs; it turns Medicaid into a block grant
and deeply cuts federal spending for it, and for SCHIP, the children's
health program; and it breaks the already agreed upon Budget Control Act
of 2011, threatening, once again, a government shutdown.

This is also the budget endorsed by Mitt Romney.
Today the Republicans made their most definitive statement for the
America they envision. This is their platform for 2012, from the top
down.

Another day in the Senate, another filibuster by Republicans on behalf of corporate America. The Senate voted on advancing a bill to repeal subsidies and tax breaks to Big Oil, and while the majority supported the bill, the filibuster held in the final 51-47 vote (Republicans Mark Kirk and Orrin Hatch were not present to vote).

Maine Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins voted with
Democrats, while Democrats Mark Begich (AK), Mary Landrieu (LA), Jim
Webb (VA) and Ben Nelson (NE) switched sides. Landrieu and Begich, being
from oil producing states, were needlessly voting for self protection,
since there wasn't a chance the filibuster could be broken. Webb and
Nelson, both retiring, are completely inexcusable.
But this is the status quo that the Republicans voted to protect:

Thursday, March 29, 2012

In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and, yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through rages of fog
where we stood, saying I

I consider myself very fortunate to have met Bryan Stevenson up close and personal. I have heard him speak countless times, and he never fails to inspire and educate. No one speaks with more power, eloquence and compassion on the death penalty, on criminal justice, on race, and on how these issues intersect.

The Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Institute in Alabama, Bryan is a brilliant lawyer who recently argued in the United States Supreme Court on behalf of two defendants who were sentenced to life without parole for murders committed when they were fourteen. He was a guest on Rachel Maddow's show last night, where he discussed the cases, which he described as "death in prison" for juveniles, and how the death penalty frequently "obscures such other issues of severe and excessive punishment."

Bryan explained how our political discourse around crime and punishment "has been corrupted by decades of politics of fear and anger" so that people believe that the fact that a terrible crime has been committed is the "end of the conversation." But, he maintained, while the criminal justice system is designed to punish and protect public safety, "it also has to be just, to have integrity and to have credibility."

Finally, he talked about the death penalty:

Increasingly we have to confront the fact that the death penalty in this country isn't a question that has to be answered by simply asking, "do people deserve to die for the crimes they committed?" I think we have to ask, "do we deserve to kill?" And if our system is flawed, if our system is discriminatory, if our system is unequal as to class and economic status, if our system permits innocent people to be wrongfully convicted and condemned, then I think we will get to a different answer then we might otherwise get.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

On March 28, 2012, Texas executed Jesse Hernandez for the beating death of 10-month old Karlos Borjas in 2001.

Hernandez' current lawyers tried to establish that his trial lawyers and initial post-conviction lawyers were grossly ineffective -- unfortunately a far from unique claim in Texas.

Neither trial counsel nor habeas counsel developed evidence which would have supported a claim that Hernandez did not directly cause the child's death. Hernandez did not dispute that he beat Karlos, who was taken to the hospital, placed in a medically-induced coma and died after taken off life support. New evidence based on expert review of the medical records suggests, however, that the hospital gave the child a lethal dose of the drug pentobarbital
and that he was removed from life support prematurely. Because the claim of trial counsel's unreasonable failure to obtain this evidence was not raised in the first instance by post-conviction counsel, current counsel has been precluded from having the evidence heard.

This is the 12th execution in the United States in 2012, the fourth in Texas.

It’s disgusting to watch Defense Secretary Leon Panetta trying to
justify the ongoing war in Afghanistan long after it’s proven unwinnable
and now after the public has decisively moved against it.

A recent poll showed that 69 percent of the American people are against the war.

But Panetta doesn’t care. “We cannot fight wars by polls,” he said. “If we do that, we’re in deep trouble.”

But it’s the people who are supposed to decide whether we wage war or
not. That’s why our Constitution requires Congress, the elected
officials closest to the people, to make this fateful decision, not the
President, nor the Secretary of Defense, nor the brass.

And the lesson of Vietnam, the lesson of Iraq, is that when the American
public clearly doesn’t support the way anymore, the war can’t be won.

The pathetic and inexcusable thing is that Panetta must know that himself. The generals must know it. And Obama must know it.

But like Robert McNamara, and General Westmoreland, and Lyndon
Johnson before them, they keep fighting the war because they are
unwilling, for political reasons, to come clean to the American public
that hired them.

It’s shameful that they keep sending our soldiers to fight and die in a useless cause.

And a government that continues to wage war without the support of its people forfeits the right to call itself a democracy.

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine, which is
one of the leading voices for peace and social justice in this country. He is the host of "Progressive Radio," a syndicated half-hour weekly interview program, and does a two-minute daily radio commentary, entitled "Progressive Point of View," which is also syndicated around the country. Rothschild is the author of You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression (New Press, 2007)

"The frictionlessness and invisibility of modern warfare for the American
public represents a drift off the course set for us by the
Constitution. It has made wars easier to start but, perhaps more
important for us now, has also made them harder to stop. It has almost
normalized the condition of America being at war. But even an inured
public has a limit, and maybe 4,000 days is it."

When asked to report on the onslaught
of political ads on television words like “flood,” “deluge,” and
“torrent,” will suddenly pepper copy. A report from the Borrell Associates
estimates $9.8 billion will be spent on political advertising this
season. Nearly 60 percent of that will be on television. Phrases like
“secret money” and “shadow funders” also pop up. Conservatives,
traditionally, call for transparency when it comes to money in politics.
Liberals will call for limits. Right now we have neither. And nowhere
is that more apparent than on your teevee.

Ask anyone in even a slightly purple state or in an even slightly
contested district: Political ads are a plague come election time. And
what exactly are we getting for our (estimated) $42 per potential voter?
Not much.

Ads are not transparent, not fact checked and in many cases not
accountable. Voters get to feel like Alex DeLarge in “A Clockwork
Orange” during his aversion therapy (eye drops, anyone?) without knowing
who’s footing the bill.

A way to combat this Stanley Kubrick-esque torment is just ban all political advertisements on television.

“That’s an assault on free speech.”

First off television is not an unregulated utopia of free speech –
that’s the Internet (for now, anyway). Television, like it or not,
doesn’t allow everything to be broadcast. There are standards
on television. Our mores may have changed over time but generally we’re
still okay with decency standards for television. Speaking is speech.
Broadcast is regulated.

And it’s worth noting, 99 percent of Americans have televisions in
their homes. It’s still the broadest, most viewed medium we have. Which
is why candidates and advocates for candidates invest billions into
blanketing it.

We don’t allow tobacco companies, for example, to advertise on
television. Why? Because their products are poisonous and harmful to our
citizenry. The same could be said for Swift Boating, Demon Sheeping and whatever Herman Cain is doing.

These ads are supposed to sway public opinion. But these aren’t
actually opinions being targeted – they’re emotions. Most Americans have
less of an opinion when it comes to politics and more of a visceral
reaction to issues. Which explains why your “political debate” over
Thanksgiving dinner ended up with you being pummeled with green bean
casserole.

And there’s no better example of where to start hysteria than in
30-second fear and loathing campaign spots. Does this elevate political
discourse? Civic engagement? Sound policy? Hardly. These ads are doing
what tobacco does: producing a carcinogenic cloud.

When President Obama traveled to Cushing, Okla. last week to declare his support
for building the southern half of the Keystone XL pipeline, he stressed
that the pipeline and other oil infrastructure projects would be done
"in a way that protects the health and safety of the American people."

But missing from the speech—and from most recent discussions of the
controversial project—was any mention of climate change or the
greenhouse gas emissions associated with mining Canadian tar sands.
Climate change was once front and center in the pipeline debate, with
federal agencies as well as environmentalists weighing in with their
concerns.

In 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency noted
in its analysis of the State Department's draft environmental review of
the Keystone XL that a comprehensive evaluation would have to consider
the tar sands industry's greenhouse gas emissions, which the EPA
calculated on a well-to-tank basis to be 82 percent greater than
conventional crude oil.

"Alongside the national security benefits of importing crude oil
from a stable trading partner, we believe the national security
implications of expanding the nation's long-term commitment to a
relatively high carbon source of oil should also be considered," the
EPA wrote.

The EPA asked the State Department "to identify practicable
mitigation measures" for the "entire suite" of greenhouse gases
associated with operation of the Keystone XL.

In a statement issued in November, the State Department said
that any decision on whether the pipeline is in the national interest
should consider "all of the relevant issues," such as "environmental
concerns (including climate change), energy security, economic impacts,
and foreign policy."

Over the past year, the pipeline's opponents have focused their campaign on protecting the fragile Nebraska Sandhills,
and climate change has taken a back seat in the debate. But
environmentalists have long warned that the pipeline would lock in the
United States to a particularly dirty form of oil that would further
exacerbate global warming.

One of the most-quoted lines has come from climate scientist James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who calls the tar sands a "fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet."
Bill McKibben, founder of the climate action group 350.org, said the Keystone protest has always been driven by "the fear that the tar sands will help destabilize the climate."

"Our colleagues in Nebraska did a great job of highlighting their
concerns about the Ogallala aquifer and the Sandhills, but for those of
us in the other 49 states, global warming was the single biggest reason
for this fight," McKibben told InsideClimate News in an email on Friday.
"Which is why it would have been nice for the president to say
something about it [in Cushing], considering he was standing in the
state that just went through the warmest summer any American state has
ever recorded."

President Obama gave his speech against a backdrop of steel pipes at
the Stillwater Pipe Yard, which is owned by TransCanada, the
Alberta-based company that wants to build the pipeline. The president's
stop in Cushing was part of a nationwide tour to publicize his
administration's "all of the above" energy strategy.

Republished with permission of InsideClimate News, a non-profit, non-partisan news organization that covers energy and climate change—plus the territory in between where law, policy and public opinion are shaped.

"Thanks to [Paul] Ryan, we now know that this election is not about deficits at
all. It is about whether we will respond to growing inequalities of
wealth and income by creating even larger inequalities of wealth and
income."

They continue to vilify Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, displaying not just their mean-spiritedness, but their remarkable misunderstanding of how birth control works and how health care operates.

They continue to blame and smear Trayvon Martin, showing their cold-heartedness while avoiding serious debate about gun control, misguided stand-your-ground laws and racism.

They tout the new budget unveiled by Congressman Paul Ryan which will not only increase the deficit, cut taxes for the wealthy, gut the social safety net, and end Medicare as we know it but, as E.J. Dionne notes, would "produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top
in modern U.S. history and likely increase poverty and inequality more
than any other budget in recent time."

I hate to perpetuate a stereotype but this sure seems ignorant, misogynistic, racist and greedy to me.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Not surprisingly, today’s debut Supreme Court
argument over the so-called “individual mandate” requiring everyone to
buy health insurance revolved around epistemological niceties such as
the meaning of a “tax,” and the question of whether the issue is ripe
for review.

Behind this judicial foreplay is the brute
political fact that if the Court decides the individual mandate is an
unconstitutional extension of federal authority, the entire law starts
unraveling.

But with a bit of political jujitsu, the President
could turn any such defeat into a victory for a single-payer healthcare
system – Medicare for all.

Here’s how.

The dilemma at the heart of the new law is that it
continues to depend on private health insurers, who have to make a
profit or at least pay all their costs including marketing and
advertising.

Yet the only way private insurers can afford to
cover everyone with pre-existing health problems, as the new law
requires, is to have every American buy health insurance – including
young and healthier people who are unlikely to rack up large healthcare
costs.

This dilemma is the product of political
compromise. You’ll remember the Administration couldn’t get the votes
for a single-payer system such as Medicare for all. It hardly tried. Not
a single Republican would even agree to a bill giving Americans the
option of buying into it.

But don’t expect the Supreme Court to address this dilemma. It lies buried under an avalanche of constitutional argument.

Those who are defending the law in Court say the
federal government has authority to compel Americans to buy health
insurance under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which gives
Washington the power to regulate interstate commerce. They argue our
sprawling health insurance system surely extends beyond an individual
state.

Those who are opposing the law say a requirement
that individuals contract with private insurance companies isn’t
regulation of interstate commerce. It’s coercion of individuals.

Unhappily for Obama and the Democrats, most
Americans don’t seem to like the individual mandate very much anyway.
Many on the political right believe it a threat to individual liberty.
Many on the left object to being required to buy something from a
private company.

The President and the Democrats could have avoided
this dilemma in the first place if they’d insisted on Medicare for all,
or at least a public option.

Cole continues: "In fact, since you can’t hunt
deer with a hand gun and most owners of a hand gun are not reservists in
the National Guard of their state, it is unclear why the US tolerates
so many hand guns. In countries like Britain, which do not, the murder
rate by gun is vanishingly small compared to the annual carnage in the
US."

Yesterday, House Republicans rolled out
their budget plan in the Washington version of a Hollywood movie
opening. There was a star turn for Budget Chair Paul Ryan at a
conservative think tank. Gaseous rhetoric -- "liberties endangered,
time to choose" -- fouled the air. There were dueling videos, and
furious salvos of partisan messaging. And a backup document -- the "Path to Prosperity" -- festooned with tables for wonks to wallow in.

Today, with fewer trumpets and less fanfare, the Congressional Progressive Caucus releases its budget plan -- A Budget for All.

Each of the two documents is designed to define a message. Their
contrasts help clarify the real choices the country faces. Federal
deficits exploded after Wall Street's excesses blew up the economy. The
questions now are who gets the bill and when does the payment start?
Ryan's Republican budget and the CPC's offer starkly different answers
that would take the country in starkly different directions.

The Bathtub Fantasy

"My goal is to cut government... to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Grover Norquist.

Ryan's Republican budget, like a speedo bathing suit on a corpulent
geezer, is revealing, but not flattering. Even by Washington standards,
this is a remarkably dishonest document. It claims to be serious, but
offers targets that are simply preposterous. It calls for leveling with
the American people, but cravenly ducks laying out who will pay for top
end tax cuts. It calls itself a "blueprint for American renewal" while
systematically trampling the American dream.

Republicans have lined up like lemmings to sign Grover Norquist's
infamous pledge never to raise taxes on anyone at any time. But turns
out they even treat the quips of the conservative gadfly as gospel. As
the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out, the Ryan budget, by its own numbers, assiduously pursues Grover's bathtub fantasy.

The Congressional Budget Office reports that under the Ryan budget,
by 2050 most of the federal government would simply cease to exist.
Ryan's budget would shrink all federal expenditures outside of interest
payments, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and children's health to
3.75 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

To translate that arcane measure, CBO notes that "spending for
defense alone has not been lower than 3 percent of GDP in any year
[since World War II]. " Ryan and Republicans call for increasing
defense spending -- so the rest of the government would have to be cut
to bathtub size. Ryan argues that the "challenges this nation faces are among the largest in its history," but the budget target he offers is, well, goofy.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Amid the furor surrounding the tragic death of 17-year-old Trayvon
Martin at the hands of self-styled neighborhood watchman George
Zimmerman, we find this slice of dubious wisdom from Geraldo Rivera: “I
think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as
George Zimmerman was.”

“When you see a black or Latino youngster, particularly on the
street, you walk to the other side of the street,” Mr. Rivera goes on to
say, “You try to avoid that confrontation. … I’ll bet you money, if he
didn’t have that hoodie on, that — that nutty neighborhood watch guy
wouldn’t have responded in that violent and aggressive way.”

Mr. Rivera, before you decide to launch a misguided #stophoodie2012
campaign a la Kony, let me posit a different theory. Could it be that
the problem wasn’t Trayvon or his hoodie? Could it be that part of the
problem is you? Because by making such ridiculous, tone-deaf statements,
you’re simply exacerbating the bias that’s at the heart of this issue.
You see, what you say and do matters, Mr. Rivera — not because you are
Geraldo Rivera, the individual, but because you are Geraldo Rivera, a
member of the media establishment, and media is one of the most powerful
ways that such stereotypes and biases get spread and reinforced in the
first place.

Consider a recently released research report titled “Opportunity for Black Men and Boys: Public Opinion, Media Depictions and Media Consumption.”
The report highlights some troubling points, which those of us who are
concerned about equality, fairness and justice in this country
intrinsically know: “Among the many factors that influence the
opportunities and achievements of black men and boys are public
perceptions and attitudes toward them as a group, and their own
self-perception. Research and experience show that expectations and
biases on the part of potential employers, teachers, health care
providers, police officers, and other stakeholders influence the life
outcomes of millions of black males, just as their own self-esteem,
identity, and sense of empowerment affect their ability to achieve under
difficult circumstances. In turn, one of the most important avenues for
maintaining (or changing) these perceptions is the mass media, with its
significant power to shape popular ideas and attitudes.”

When it come to mass media, the report details, black men and boys are:

- Vastly underrepresented: They are all too
rarely visible across multiple mediums, whether as characters in TV
shows, in advertisements, or – as my partner often points out – in
video games. They are also underrepresented as “talking heads” or
experts on the news.

- Negatively depicted: When they do appear in media, they are
depicted in a negative light. Rather than as “relatable characters with
well-developed personal lives (i.e. fathers)…black males are
overrepresented when the media touch on certain negative topics, such as
criminality, unemployment, and poverty,” the report says.

- Narrowly portrayed: Any “positive images and attributes with which
black males are associated tend to be constrained to a small,
stereotypic set which includes sports, physical achievement in general,
aggressiveness, and musicality, to the exclusion of other everyday
virtues.

Simply put: the media to a large extent ignores the fullness, richness and complexity of black men and boys’ lives.

The result? According to the report: “Distorted media representations
can be expected to create attitudinal effects ranging from general
antagonism toward black men and boys, to higher tolerance for race-based
socio-economic disparities, reduced attention to structural and other
big-picture factors, and public support for punitive approaches to
problems.”

In turn — and pay extra close attention to this part Mr. RIvera —
these perceptions could mean trouble “any time a black man or boy is in a
position where his fate depends on how he is perceived by others.” The
impact can range from less attention from doctors, and harsher
sentencing by judges to lower likelihood of being hired or admitted to
school. The impact can also include a beautiful young boy being shot
for no discernible reason and the institutions sworn to protect and
serve him failing to even detain his killer a month after his death.

In a sense you are right, Mr. Rivera. Bias against black men and boys
does lead to negative and sad outcomes. It can make us, as you say,
walk to the other side of the street when we see them coming our way. It
can make us see a weapon when there is only candy. It can make police
officers see dangerous thugs rather than fathers, brothers or sons. It
can make teachers and school administrators see future criminals that
deserve harsh punishment rather than scared or troubled little boys
needing help and comfort.

But, if you really care for our youth, Mr. Rivera, why don’t you use
your considerable platform to change the way black men and boys are
depicted and represented in your chosen career field — news,
specifically, or mass media, broadly? Instead of asking parents not to
let their kids wear hoodies, why don’t you push for diversity in TV,
print or online news, at all levels, as subjects, reporters and
executives? Or advocate for more training so reporters don’t reinforce
problematic frames when they cover communities of color? Or call for
multi-dimensional representations of black men and boys in books, on
reality TV, on talk shows, in sitcoms and in movies? Maybe then you can
help us begin to change how we as a society perceive black and brown men
and boys. Maybe then, Mr. Rivera, you can actually help save people’s
lives, rather than simply perpetuating stereotypes.

Bilen Mesfin is a former journalist and a strategic communications consultant for social change leaders and organizations.

Friday, March 23, 2012

The Affordable Care Act was signed into law two years ago. Although it was the product of painful negotiations and compromises, and many of the benefits do not kick in until 2014, the infographic below (courtesy of ThinkProgress) shows "what has already changed for the better and what the Republicans want to repeal":

"Letterman landed a new dog joke just this week. (“It was such a
beautiful day today, Mitt Romney was riding on the roof of his car.”)
Comedy is the only business we can be certain that a Romney presidency
would grow."

As if the disaster of RoundUp resistant superweeds
sweeping our farmland weren’t enough, Monsanto is now preparing to
launch an even greater disaster: a new soybean engineered to be
resistant to the older, more toxic weedkiller, dicamba. The seed — which Monsanto plans
to market in 2014 if approved — will also come stacked with the
company’s RoundUp Ready gene, and is designed to be used with Monsanto’s
proprietary herbicide “premix” of dicamba and glyphosate.

More dicamba-tolerant crops (corn, cotton, canola) are all waiting in
the wings. If this new generation of GE crops is approved, then dicamba
use will surge, just as it did with RoundUp. And we all know how well
that didn't work out. To the giant pesticide company, this chemical arms
race is all part of the plan.

If you’re thinking that pouring more chemicals onto already devastated
farmland sounds a bit like pouring gasoline on a fire, I’d have to agree
with you. So do some hefty farm businesses, as it turns out.

Farm business rejects Monsanto’s answer

The Big 6
pesticide companies' pipeline of new herbicide-tolerant crops poses a
serious risk to farmers’ livelihood and rural economies. Weedkillers
like dicamba and 2,4-D drift
far and can easily destroy other farmers’ crops of tomatoes, grapes,
beans, cotton, non-GE soy — just about any broadleaf plant. That’s why
farmers and some large ag companies are getting worried. As Steve Smith,
Director of Agriculture for Red Gold, the largest canned tomato
processor in the United States, testified before Congress in 2010:

I am convinced that in all of my years serving the agriculture
industry, the widespread use of dicamba herbicide [poses] the single
most serious threat to the future of the specialty crop industry in the
Midwest.

Smith warns of the damaging surge in dicamba use that would accompany
introduction of dicamba-tolerant GE crops — both over more acreage and
throughout the season. He predicts widespread crop damage, harm to
non-target plants that would result from spray and volatilization drift,
and financial loss — not only to growers but also to processing
companies like his that would suffer major supply disruption, even
conflicts erupting between neighbors eroding the social fabric of rural
community life. His testimony concluded:

The introduction of dicamba tolerant soybeans is a classic case of
short-sighted enthusiasm over a new technology, blinding us to the
reality that is sure to come. Increased dicamba usage, made possible
through the introduction of dicamba tolerant soybeans, is poor public
policy and should not be allowed.

We can choose to get off the pesticide treadmill

We’ve just witnessed an incredible victory
with the removal of the infamous cancer-causing pesticide methyl iodide
from the entire U.S. marketplace. So we know that we can win. And we
know that the threat that pesticides pose to farm sustainability, our
water and air quality, our communities’ and our children’s health can be
blocked. But we have to be dedicated and smart.

Right now, companies like Monsanto, BASF
and Dow are planning to drive up their pesticide sales by introducing a
new generation of herbicide-tolerant crops, designed to be used with
their proprietary weedkillers. The test case before us —the first of this new generation up for reviewand currently awaiting USDA approval — is Dow’s 2,4-D GE corn (“a very bad idea”
as my colleague Margaret Reeves explains). The most effective thing we
can do to protect farmers and consumers from dicamba-tolerant crops is
to shut down the pipeline of herbicide-tolerant crops — beginning with
2,4-D-resistant corn.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Mississippi executed William Mitchell on March 22, 2012, for the murder of Patty Milliken.

Mississippi is notorious for appointing unqualified attorneys to represent capital defendants at trial and on appeal, and for failing to provide them with adequate funding. Mitchell's case was no different. His long history of mental illness was not investigated by either his trial lawyer or his post-conviction lawyer. At no time did his counsel try to establish his
"intellectual disability" despite the availability of such evidence. The Mississippi state courts subsequently rejected requests for a hearing -- or even funding for an expert -- to prove that he indeed suffered from an "intellectual disability."

This is the eleventh execution in the United States in 2012, the third in Mississippi, and the second in Mississippi this week.

"America has always been the kind of place where people can reinvent
themselves, escaping from their pasts by turning the knobs on their own
virtual Etch-A-Sketch identities. But the ubiquity of video technology
has made this much, much harder to do. Videos have a way of reminding
everyone who you are — and were."

Throughout American history, some of our greatest political thinkers
have understood that at the end of the day, democracy works better when
average Americans rather than elites run things, because regular people
instinctively get the truth of what is going on in the real world — on
Main Street — more than out-of-touch elites. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin
Franklin, and Thomas Paine got this; as did Abe Lincoln, who believed in
a government of, by, and for the people. So did the reformers and
organizers of the 20th Century like Saul Alinsky and Walter Reuther.
They all knew that the people might get things wrong some of the time,
but that ultimately it was better to trust and empower regular folks
because the elites generally messed up a lot more of the time than
democracy did.

When I read the great memos and reams of data
that Stan Greenberg and James Carville at Democracy Corps put out, and
read focus group and polling reports from other pollsters I respect, I
am reminded of that truth once again. It is striking how much better
regular folks understand, than most of the elites in this country, what
is really going on with this economy. They aren’t following the
moment-to-moment blips in the job or GDP numbers so much as they know
deep in their guts that the American middle class is in real danger,
that it is on a long downhill decline, and that there needs to be big
fundamental changes. This has big implications for the 2012 election.

The swing voters swing because they go back and forth on whom to
blame more — Wall Street and big business or the government — and what
then to do about it. They think both sides of that equation are bad:
that Wall Street screwed up the economy, and that government can’t
succeed because it is bought off by Wall Street and other wealthy
special interests. They think both political parties are bad. And they
for the most part aren’t feeling like the economy is getting much
better, or that, as President Obama put it in his State of the Union
address, “America is back!” They are pessimists (at least in the short
term), populists, alienated from the establishment. That is why I
continue to fear a more upbeat message on how the economy really is
getting better from the Obama team will cause him to lose. Stan and
James reminded me recently of the last ad we ran in the 1992 Clinton
campaign, the single most effective ad we ran that fall. I wish I could
find the video for you, but I haven’t been able to. It was a 15-second
ad that had a clip of George Bush talking about how the economy really
was getting better and jobs were starting to pick up again (both of
which were technically true), and then the screen just cut to lettering
and a voice saying “How ya doing?” People responded strongly to it,
feeling in their gut that the economy the last four years had not been
getting better, and that Bush was out of touch for saying so. It turned a
race that had been tightening into an easy six-point win.

My concern isn’t just, as I have written about before, that the Obama team doesn’t brag too much about economic improvements
that most voters aren’t feeling yet. My bigger worry is that Obama,
other Democrats, and the broad progressive movement will just miss the
moment we are in: middle-class voters have a deep understanding that
something is profoundly wrong with the direction our economy has been
heading for the last 30 years. They understand, far better than most
elites, the underlying trends that are grinding middle-class families
into the dirt, and are making it harder and harder for poor people and
young people to climb the ladder into the middle class. They are cynical
about politicians bragging about job growth because they know that most
new jobs don’t pay what the ones that were lost used to, or are temp
jobs that will be gone all too fast. They know that wage growth is flat,
housing prices are down, and the costs of necessities — gas, groceries,
health care — keep going up. They worry about being able to retire with
enough money to live on, about taking care of their elderly parents and
grandparents, and about sending their kids to college with tuition
rates skyrocketing.

This kind of frame of mind for voters makes things challenging for an
incumbent President trying to win re-election, but it also presents an
opportunity. The Osawatomie, Kansas speech,
where Obama cast himself as the fighter for the middle class in tough
times, is a part of the answer, and I am glad he has taken on that
mantle. But I think he needs to be more explicit and more expansive in
creating the narrative, telling the story, of how we got here. The
30-year frame is helpful in part because that is clearly where voters
are — that our problems started quite a while back and we have been in
decline too long — and in part because it doesn’t make it seem like
Obama is just trying to blame Bush, which feels too partisan and
blame-gamy. (I also like the fact that it is true. It was Reagan’s
policies 30 years ago which decimated our manufacturing base, started us
on our current path of massive trade deficits year after year, began
the massive deregulation of the financial sector, and embraced supply
side economics that first led to massive tax cuts for the wealthy, big
budget deficits, and a concentration of both income at the top and
industry concentration in one sector of the economy after another.)

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Candidate Romney has taken outrageously extreme positions on contraception, immigration, the environment, and a host of other issues in order to appeal to the Republican base, described so vividly by Hendrick Hertzberg as "an excitable, overlapping assortment of Fox News
friends, Limbaugh dittoheads, Tea Party animals, war whoopers,
nativists, Christianist fundamentalists, à la carte Catholics
(anti-abortion, yes; anti-torture, no), anti-Rooseveltians (Franklin and
Theodore), global-warming denialists, post-Confederate white Southrons,
creationists, birthers, market idolaters, Europe demonizers, and gun
fetishists." But what will he do after securing the nomination when he must attract a saner, more moderate electorate?

That's easy. He will just stand on his head, shake, and try something new. Don't believe me? Here's what Eric Fehrnstrom, his campaign spokesperson said in response to a question on whether there was concern that Santorum and Gingrich might force Romney to tack too far to the right:

"Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything
changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up
and restart all over again."

Jed Lewison at Daily Kos notes that the only thing remarkable about this statement is that "Mitt Romney's campaign is admitting ahead of time what we already knew:
that Romney doesn't have any real core principles and will say whatever
he thinks it will take to win the election."

Romney 1.0 was an independent who distanced himself from Reagan;
Romney 2.0 was a moderate Republican with self-described "progressive"
views on social issues and health care; Romney 3.0 was a social
conservative who cared deeply about the culture war; and Romney 4.0 is a
far-right businessman who represents the GOP establishment and the top
1%.

What will the post-primary Romney look like? We'll have to see how it shakes out.

The alarming pace of events in Afghanistan is forcing United States and NATO strategists to adjust their strategy and timetable to end the war.
But they cannot acknowledge the flaw at the heart of their efforts.

A number of recent columns in this series has reflected on the
interplay of military and political dynamics in the "greater middle
east", from Iran to Afghanistan. to Syria.
Several have examined the possibility that a process of crisis
escalation involving "accidents, incidents or mavericks" - a combination
summarised in the acronym "AIM" - would trigger war over Iran (see "America, Israel, Iran: mediation vs war", 16 February 2012).

A subsequent column assessing the conflict in Afghanistan concluded
that United States policy there is unlikely to change much even if Mitt
Romney defeats Barack Obama in the presidential election in November
2012 (see "Afghanistan: the endgame drama",
1 March 2012). But in Afghanistan as in Iran, the AIM effect may now be
having an impact in a way that has implications for the future of
western military power.

A political retreat

The argument for continuity in Afghanistan draws on evidence that President Obama has decided on a timetable↑
for withdrawal of American troops there, hoping both that Afghan
government forces can assume responsibility for security and that any
Taliban role in a post-withdrawal government would be very limited.
Romney's election
rhetoric (and that of any plausible Republican rival) might scorn
Obama's approach as "defeatism" or worse, but the next US president
would follow a similar course - precisely because the western↑ predicament in Afghanistan is now becoming unsustainable.

The response to such acts↑ by American soldiers as urinating on dead Afghans and burning↑ copies of the Qur'an (both of which led to widespread fury and retaliatory attacks↑ on American targets) strengthen↑ the case that strategic reality in Afghanistan is becoming inexorable.

The massacre of sixteen Afghan civilians on 11 March by (it seems) a lone American soldier↑ confirms
in bleak fashion that the "AIM" concept can shed light on the Afghan
endgame as much as it does the twisting Iranian crisis. This might yet
be attributed to a "maverick", but it is certainly also an "incident" in
the tripartite schema - and its sheer horror, especially the killing of
children, makes it one of special extremity that also betrays a deep
problem within the US military.

But in combination with the earlier outrages, the massacre may come↑
to acquire importance as a rare example of an AIM element that will -
by clarifying options on both sides - have the effect of ratcheting a
conflict down rather than up. Its impact is already significant. In
Afghanistan it has intensified antagonism↑ to the foreign military presence, as evidenced↑ on 15 March both in the Taliban's statement that it is suspending↑
preliminary talks with the US and in the demand of Afghanistan's
president, Hamid Karzai, that American forces retreat to their bases
from villages and patrols.

The Trayvon Martin case "is obviously about race, and is important on those grounds.
Race relations are after all the original and ongoing tension in U.S.
history. But it is also about self-government, rule of law, equality
before the law, accountability of power, and every other value that we
contend is integral to the American ideal."
James Fallows, The Atlantic

"I just want to echo this sentiment and expand on it a bit. The
approach here is not 'either it's about race or it isn't.' It's 'this is
about race along with. . .' . . . Moreover,
it's worth understanding that this movement toward an absurdly low
threshold for self-defense claims is a national one, which is making
headway in states where very few black people live.
As is often the case, black people bear a spectacular burden for bad
public policy. But the burden is never solely--and rarely even
mostly--born by black people."

Republicans are desperate. They can’t attack Obama on jobs because the jobs picture is improving.

Their attack on the Administration’s rule requiring insurers to cover
contraception has backfired, raising hackles even among many Republican
women.

Their attack on Obama for raising gas prices has elicited scorn from
economists of all persuasions who know oil prices are set in global
markets and that demand in the United States has actually fallen.

Their presidential ambitions are being trampled in a furious fraternal war among Republican candidates.

Their Tea Party wing wants to reopen the budget deal forged with
Democrats after Republicans got bloodied by threatening to block an
increase in the debt limit.

So what are Republicans to do now? What they always do when they have nothing else to say.
Call for a tax cut, of course.

It doesn’t matter that their new “tax reform” plan (leaked to the
Wall Street Journal late Monday, to be released Tuesday morning) has as
much chance of being enacted as Herman Cain has of being elected
president.

It doesn’t matter than the plan doesn’t detail how they plan to pay
for the tax cuts. Or whether an even bigger whack would have to be taken
out of Medicare than Paul Ryan’s original voucher plan – which would
drowned many elderly under rising medical costs.

It doesn’t even matter that the plan would probably raise taxes on many lower-income Americans,
All that matters is the headlines.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Mississippi executed Larry Puckett on March 20, 2012, for the murder of Rhonda Hatten Griffis in 1995. Puckett, who was 18 at the time, admitted to being at the victim's home to burglarize it but insisted that it was Griffis' husband, for whom he was formerly employed, who committed the murder.

In the most recent legal challenge, Puckett's lawyers argued that the execution should be blocked because prosecutors kept African Americans off the jury and
Puckett's former lawyers unreasonably failed to challenge his conviction on
this ground.

Over five thousand people signed an online petition in support of Puckett, and many gathered at the state Capitol on Monday to protest Puckett's execution and the execution of William Mitchell, which is scheduled for March 22nd.

Jim Craig of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, criticized Mississippi's legal system, which makes it impossible to fairly apply the death penalty: "Even though these cases have been going on for a long time, they
really have not had their day in court. Neither of these two men have
had their day in court. And it is time for people to stand up and say so
and demand real justice according to law."

This is the tenth execution in the United States in 2012, the second in Mississippi.

"Locking up Ravi ultimately won't do much to stop bullying or fight homophobia. His prosecution speaks volumes, however, about America's rush to use
criminal justice to address problems that are better resolved by other
means. Every bad act is not a crime. Every kid who does a stupid thing
is not a criminal."Professor Paul Butler

Dharun Ravi

Dharun Ravi was an immature college kid who secretly videotaped his roommate, Tyler Clementi, having sex with
another man. Clementi tragically killed himself shortly thereafter. Ravi was convicted of hate crimes, invasion of privacy and other charges, after rejecting a plea bargain that would have resulted in no jail time. He now faces up to ten years in prison and deportation to India where he hasn't lived since he was 2 years old. As George Washington University law professor Paul Butler writes, "Ravi should be shamed by his fellow students and kicked out of his dorm,
but he should not be sent to prison for years and then banished from
the United States."

Ravi is being scapegoated, Professor Butler points out, for what is sadly embedded in our culture: "Until last year people were
being kicked out of the military because they were homosexuals. None of
the four leading presidential candidates -- President Obama, Mitt
Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich -- thinks that gay people should be
allowed to get married."

Butler argues that "a better way to honor the life of Clementi
would be for everyone to get off their high horse about a 20-year-old
kid and instead think about how we can promote civil rights in our own
lives."

Though a national
conversation about civility and respect would have been better, as usual
for social problems, we looked to the criminal justice system. The
United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any country in the
world. We are an extraordinarily punitive people.

"There is, quite obviously, a desperate need to believe that when an
American engages in acts of violence of this type (meaning: as a
deviation from formal American policy), there must be some underlying
mental or emotional cause that makes it sensible, something other than
an act of pure hatred or Evil. When a Muslim engages in acts of violence
against Americans, there is an equally desperate need to believe the
opposite: that this is yet another manifestation of inscrutable hatred
and Evil, and any discussion of any other causes must be prohibited and
ignored."

Mitt Romney is a true conservative who should have easily nailed down
the Republican nomination by now, particularly given the truly lunatic
fringe that is his competition. His inability to do so says far more
about the sorry state of the Republican Party than it does about Romney.

When Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, AKA "Joe the Plumber," won a Republican
nomination for Congress, Sarah Palin's transformation of the Republican
electoral base was complete. What has happened to the GOP, much to the
consternation of the elite party establishment, is that it has become a
party of paranoid conspiracy freaks, religious kooks, bigots, the
marginally insane, and amateur grifters like Joe the Plumber. If Palin
were running in the primary election for president, there is no doubt
that she would be winning it, probably handily. This, in a nutshell, is
why Mitt Romney, the only plausibly qualified candidate running for
president in the GOP, is having such a hard time winning what should be a
cakewalk primary. This party is no longer the party of the country club
or even of Ronald Reagan. This is a party unhinged from reality. This
is the party of Palin.

After Sarah Palin was first elevated to from obscure governor of less
than 1 percent of the population, her influence over the party became
abundantly clear. Other than Obama, nobody pulled larger crowds than
her. She became the top small donor fundraiser in the Republican Party.
She commanded the biggest speaking fees, sold the most books, and even
won herself a top paid spot at Fox News.

Her endorsement during the 2010
election cycle was the most coveted in the country. The media
proclaimed her ability to "connect" with the most base desires of the
GOP as unrivaled. Until Palin's infamous "blood libel" video permanently
damaged her as a national candidate, she represented everything the GOP
base wants in an American leader: White, not too smart, against
modernity, an ability to ignore inconsistency, a devotion to
megachurchdom, hostility to metropolitan areas, and hateful of anyone
not like themselves. The fact that she was woefully unprepared to take
on the responsibilities of being president was irrelevant. The
Republican right doesn't want a president. They want a televangelist.

While many of us incorrectly predicted a Palin run for the
presidency, her imprint on the primary has been obvious. At every turn,
Republican primary voters have spoken loud and clear: they want someone
who can beat Barack Obama, but they want that person to be as
unqualified to be president as possible. While the establishment has
decided that Mitt Romney offers their best shot at accomplishing that
goal, even they have taken note of just how far right their base has
gone. In any other era, the current version of Mitt Romney would have
been considered a far right ideologue far outside the American
mainstream. The current version of Romney is considered a moderate not
simply because of his previous positions, but because the party base has
moved far beyond Reagan conservatism and turned into a radical hate
group writ large. If it wasn't for Palin's imprint on the party base,
this election would look far more favorable for any Republican
challenger.

Each of the now defunct presidential candidates has tried to take her
place this year. Each of them failed. Michele Bachmann tried to fill
her space with her own brand of crazy, but she literally didn't hunt.
Perhaps she needed to air advertisements of herself firing a fully
automatic rifle. Then Rick Perry moved in to take up the Palin banner,
but he didn't hate brown people sufficiently. Then Herman Cain, who
prominently endorsed Joe the Plumber, flew the Palin banner high. But he
too had a problem: being a Black man sexually interested in White
women, which is how we got Obama in the first place. (Sex scandals don't usually bother Republicans. Ask David Vitter. It is only a crime when Democrats do it.)
Finally there was Newt, who seemed perfect at first look. Here was a
guy who was a noted liar, an accomplished grifter, and a moral disgrace.
While Newt could have certainly represent the values of the Palin
Party, he has one tiny flaw: Newt is the most disliked human being in
America. Even Palin's endorsement can't overcome that. So what's left is
Santorum. Literally. A political nincompoop who can't even get basic
things done like getting on the ballot.

Rush Limbaugh, the intellectual leader of the party since William F.
Buckley's death, has openly proclaimed Palin the leader of the
Republican Party. She knows nothing, hates everyone, and is in politics
purely for financial gain just like himself. The Palin Party does not
want Mitt Romney. For while Palin and Romney are both ambitious to a
fault, Romney's ambition is of a different variety. Romney couldn't care
less about minorities, gays, women, city and suburb dwellers,
immigrants, or any of the other "others" that the Palin Party despises.
Mitt Romney couldn't care less about religion, including his own. That's
why he doesn't like talking about it honestly in public. Mitt Romney
cares about one thing and one thing only: that the top one percent stay
on top and become even more top. That's a problem for the Palin Party
because they believe they should be on top by virtue of being better
than everyone else ... by being "real Americans" rather than rich
Americans. No matter what Mitt Romney does, the most he can hope for is
that the Palin Party will tolerate him because they hate the alternative
more. After all, as bad as Mitt Romney is, he's still a white man. In
the Palin Party, that counts for a lot. But his Palin problem will still
be there.

In the end, Palin's legacy will fade away as quickly as it came
about. Her party is an aging, shrinking, dying demographic of rural
White men. Many of the Republican party's luminaries understand this.
Likely sooner than later, the GOP establishment will come to grips with
the idea that if they are to survive as a political institution they
will have to jettison the nutcase fringe. The reckoning will come, as
the American political system tends to correct anomalies over time. But
first, they'll have to blow an election that should have been easy as
apple pie. For that, Mitt Romney can thank Sarah Palin.